Friday 30 December 2011 19.09 EST
First published on Friday 30 December 2011 19.09 EST

This week the Pacific Ocean nation of Samoa sacrificed its yesterday in the hope of a better tomorrow. Missing out Friday 30 December 2011 altogether, the island skipped directly from Thursday 29 to Saturday 31 in the expectation that, by leapfrogging across the international dateline, entrepreneurial Samoans would be better placed to expand business ties with their main trading partners in Australia and New Zealand in a new year and era which, as a result of the lost Friday, are now suddenly approaching rather more speedily for Samoa than in the past.

It may be tempting to dismiss this distant calendar recalibration as an obscure event in a remote part of the world of little relevance to us in north-western Europe. Yet as 2011 slips below the horizon of memory on Saturday evening, it may be worth reflecting that there could nevertheless be a lesson for Britain in Samoa's example. That lesson, it could even be argued, is both practical and metaphorical. For is not modern Britain also at risk of wandering on to the wrong side of a symbolic date line? And perhaps we too may need to take a bold collective grasp of ourselves to get to where our nation ought to be?

There is a wider metaphor to pursue here. But there is an irritatingly practical point to deal with first. For, in much the same way as Samoa was doing until this week, our culture seems also to be a day or two adrift of where the diary says we ought to be. The new year messages which have issued from political, business and union leaders over the past few days – Nick Clegg delivered his as long ago as Wednesday, followed by Ed Miliband on Thursday – are literally out of step with the times. Saturday's now standard promulgation of the new year's honours list at the end of the old year rather than at the start of the new only adds to this impression of compulsive seasonal gun-jumping.

While we remain in the nagging detail of this subject, would it be too much to ask our politicians, and the honours people too, to let New Year's Day, in future, take place on the appointed day of 1 January and not in the late December days following Christmas? This is indisputably only a small point in the larger scheme of things, and the media are not without sin on this score either, but Saturday is the day on which to make it. And, while we are at it, what possible justification can there be for the reintroduction of political honours – knighthoods and damehoods for not especially distinguished backbench MPs of a certain vintage – in the honours list? It somehow encapsulates David Cameron that he is the only party leader with the relaxed confidence to defer delivering his own new year message until, er, the new year while at the same time having the cocky insensitivity to reintroduce the reactionary award of honours to MPs.

Now back to the metaphor. Britain, like Samoa, is an island nation, facing many ways at once but confronted by existential economic choices. In 2011, Britain has drifted into ever more dangerous waters. It has done so, first, by clinging to an economic austerity strategy which did not work, is not working, and which threatens to damage business and household life still further next year and perhaps for a decade beyond. Second, Britain has allowed an abiding insularity to deceive it into imagining that prosperity and nationhood are best safeguarded by cutting adrift from our main markets and drifting alone on the ocean.

That's where tiny Samoa has something to teach our self-described great Britain. Samoa has looked at its strategic place amid the swirling currents of history. It has taken a large collective decision about where its interests lie as a nation and a people. And it has done something bold to break with the failing past. As a result Samoa can look forward to 2012 with some hope. Meanwhile Britain can only peer into the future with mounting unease that we are not heading anywhere we would wish to go.